The last time I travelled with my mother and sister on holiday was a trip to turkey seventeen years ago. My sister beat all the men off the backgammon table, I tried to hire a moped without a licence and nearly crashed it and my mother got sunburned so bad she had to stay in her hotel room. This family trip was infinitely more sophisticated not, as you might think, because we are old bags now but because our destination is a last bastion of civilisation in an ever homogenised, sanitised and commercialised world. Tbilisi is heaven on earth. Not just because you can still smoke between courses, at the table, or because the food you eat in every restaurant is fresh, seasonal, unlike anything you've ever eaten and utterly delicious - our favourite was Badrijani Nigvizit, aubergines in a walnut paste garnished with a little pomegranate jewel, or because you can buy fresh Georgian cheese bread Khachapuri from ancient basement bakery Tone, that you enter from a tiny street door down stone steps into a Bruegal painting where industrious Georgian women pile fresh sweet bread into huge fire ovens, or because drinking Usakhelauri a light semi-sweet red wine is like being enveloped in the mountain sunshine that ripen the grapes (I am cradling a bottle to open on my sisters birthday), but because despite relentless onslaught over centuries from unfriendly neighbours the Georgian culture and spirit remains undimmed, in many respects strengthened by the blatant disregard for its borders and insidious assaults on its people, churches and monuments.
Walking into Kashveti church on Rustaveli Avenue for the first time is a profoundly moving experience. A stunning and eclectic array of framed religious paintings climb timorously up the walls but beneath is a grey wash, all the original religious murals gone - the Communists artistic contribution to this beautiful church. The church is not only bustling with Georgians, lighting candles, praying, it is bustling with history, tangible, profound history made triumphant by the cloaked priests with beards who sit in a three dimensional Caravaggio painting in the ornate vestry. My sister and I refrained from whipping our cameras out and capturing the blue and yellow light of stained glass falling on a rather handsome portrait of Jesus as it felt disrespectful, but trust me, he was gorgeous.
Next door to Kashveti Church is the Georgian art gallery which currently houses an exciting array of Georgians most famous painters; Lado Gudiashvili, Nika Piroshmani and David Kakabadze. The gallery space is huge and grand with comfortable benches for sitting and looking which is what my sister and I did with great pleasure, this trip was a rare chance to evade the service of our children and we both loved 'Imeretia My mother' a stunning painterly portrait of his mother doing needle-work. It made me feel desperately inadequate that I have not, as yet, ever crocheted a pair of socks. Lado Gudiashvili never painted ears as he felt them to be ugly, I couldn't help thinking that Gudiashvili would have loved our cafe companion who we met later that day - a well loved Georgian underground poet Kote with only one ear, the other was sliced off in a fight. He told us he had an enormous penguin paper back collection of over ten thousand books and was an aficionado on American literature from the beginning of the last century, reeling off name after name he told us he read for six hours a day. He was famous for posting hundreds of guerilla style poetry slogans across Tbilisi during the dark days of the Russian occupation and is somewhat of a folk legend - unfortunately the impact of his slogans are somewhat lost in translation but he told me he once broke into the parliamentary offices and stuck slogans on the inside of the toilet doors saying something along the lines of 'You're shit'. Sagashvilli, the previous prime minister though it would teach him a lesson to have another of his slogans plastered on the bins - he'd obviously never heard of Banksy and Kote became an even bigger star of the underground resistance. 61 now and leading a rather comfortable life in the Beverly Hills of Tbilisi he claimed that there was no longer an 'underground' because there was no 'ground', and left me with one of his poems 'The past is perfect, the present is continous, the future is perfect.' I imagine there is probably an underground somewhere, we were just in the wrong cafe but it is always great to meet an artist whose fearless championing of the spirit of defiance, sense of humour and intelligence is communicated so effortlessly. He was a lovely man and it was a great honour to meet him.
If you are prone to 'craft-skills envy' don't come to Georgia, at practically every street corner hand-made socks are lovingly laid out - from booties with bobbles to man-size sacks, all hand-made by 'Imeretias' who appear to be the back-bone of this beautiful country. Apart from socks Churchkhela is also sold in abundance. Otherwise known as Georgian snickers and a healthier more tasty snack I have not found - they hang in knobbly bunches and are walnuts coated in grape juice. The streets in central Tbilisi are wide and leafy - great piazza like pavements stepping up or down into grand classical buildings and huge trees usher you into wide squares and balconied side streets. The woodwork on every balcony is intricate and stunning - the streets and houses scramble up the banks of the wooded hill that flank the city and if you head up to the Narikala Fortress a walled church on the hill you can look down into Tbilisi botanical gardens where an extremely modern looking botanical school watches studiously over the stunning terraced hillside. Tbilisi has a dream-like quality and although the dynamic modern architecture is largely disliked by discerning Tbilisians I happen to love it. If you stand on the other side of Narikala Fortress you get the full force of the range of architectural styles , old Tbilisi,communist Tbilisi,classical grand Tbilisi and new Tbilisi. The huge mushroom like building that sprouts from behind an ornate rococo block somehow makes sense of the communist lego which litters the sky line - its organic curved modernism so different from the brutal bastardisation of Corbusier the communists inflicted on the city as to placate it, to tease it, to confuse it into obsolescence - this is no toy-tourist-town preserved in aspic like so many of our precious boring tourist cities, this is a dynamic beast, living and breathing and I suspect on the brink of its most exciting era yet.
If all this excitement is getting too much for you, as it certainly was for my sister and I after a night on the town watching Georgian dancers bounce off their knees, drinking Bagrationi sparkling wine and smoking like chimneys - we took a trip with a Georgian friend Leo to Davit Gareja Monastery about one and a half hours drive outside the city. There are many trips you can do from Tbilisi but I particularly wanted to do this one as I had had only a fleeting visit on my last trip to Georgia and very much wanted to see the churches and chapels carved into caves on the hillside facing Azerbaijan. So often you can go to a place and forget to just sit and enjoy its peace and quiet so after sitting and trying to etch into my mind the outlines of the monks cells carved into the rock face while sitting in a pale lilac courtyard with an ancient knotted tree, we left our mother with a good book in the car and my sister and I headed off up the craggy hillside. My sister was particularly excited when her phone read 'Welcome to Azerbaijan', as were all of us when a young girl walking ahead of us decided we needed a sound track for our ascent and started to play Pink 'Try' loudly on her phone, as we reached the summit she confirmed her DJ-ing skills by playing Rihanna 'Diamonds' as we all gazed out across the lunar-like Azerbaijan landscape - and then behind us to the soft rust coloured waves of rock that carried us back into Georgia. It was a perfect moment. 'Find light in the beautiful sea, I chose to be happy'.
The paintings at Davit Gareja are astonishing not only because of their historical import but also because of their beauty - we bumped into one of the men who studied and helped to restore Davit Gareja in the eighties and nineties - an old friend of our companion and he explained a complicated but fascinating interpretation of 'The hospitality of Abraham' which was depicted on one of the many walls of the many tiny chapels carved into the side of the hill. Most interestingly that orthodox christianity in that part of the world did not permit the depiction of God the Father, believing it to be an anthropomorphising of him and therefore blasphemous, this makes absolute sense given the proximity to the muslim world so in order to depict the holy trinity in this chapel, god the father, god the son and god the holy spirit, they reappropriated the depiction of 'The hospitality of Abraham' and gave all three men at the table scrolls, unifying them and giving the image a double meaning without overtly flouting the churches rules on iconography.
When we reached second summit there was more music as one young man began to sing a Georgian song into the warm billowing wind. His companion held her scarf above her head in appreciation and we all stood and gazed at them. When he broke into a rendition of Nina Simones 'Feeling Good' which wasn't quite so effortless we all shuffled away, started to hunt in our bags for Churchkhela and begin our descent.
By now we were beginning to experience retail withdrawal - the Lari's were burning a hole in our pocket as everything is so reasonable its hard to spend money here so after freshening up at our sumptuous hotel - the Tbilisi Marriott, we ventured out and were catatonic with excitement to find what Georgians describe as a 'junk market' to us of course this was a treasure trove - my sister displaying her sophisticated taste and homemaking skills by purchasing antique childrens books in english a gorgeous rug, tin tea-pots while I bought knives, maps and a pack of cards. I have always envied Zoe three things, her figure, her taste and her eye for a good bit of schmutter. She is gorgeous, well dressed and a great shopper, fact.
Our last night in Tbilisi was rather poignantly spent in Pur Pur - an establishment effortlessly embodying shabby chic as it is housed in a crumbling Tbilisi square with floor to ceiling windows and enormous lampshades. We drank Usakhelauri like it was berry juice ate mackerel in pomegranate sauce and I watched my sister and my mother enthusiastically chat to the new friends we had made. It was poignant because we learned that this old square is soon to be demolished and replaced, although nobody seemed to know what with - which was unsettling. We were there on the very last night while a string quartet serenaded us. That we should enjoy Kote's 'continuous present' was imperative. My friend Maia gifted me a book of Alexander Blok's poems and I opened it on a very appropriate poem; 'There is so little time left for us,To Marvel at these banquets here:Mysteries shall unfold before us, And distant worlds shine in the air.'
